Gold Dredge 8 arrived in the Goldstream Valley in 1928, it had a steel hull, 99 ft.long & 50-ft. wide & was efficient in recovering gold. Bucket-lines were used to dig, each bucket line consisted of 64 buckets & were pinned together in a chain, each bucket weighing 1,500 lbs & could hold 6 cubic ft. of gravel. The bucket-line could dig to a depth of 28 ft. & had a top speed of 22 buckets per minute. It was capable of processing over 6,000 cubic yards of material in a 24 hour shift.
All four of us got a chance to pan some gold, not somethng...

Sunday, July 11, 2010
We awoke at 6:00 am to a much different weather day. It was cloudy, windy, and 60˚. During the night we heard heavy rain on the roof of the motorhome. We were up early to travel to Fox to go to the ElDorado Gold Mine. On our way there we saw a young moose without antlers. It was our first moose sighting ever! There showers along the way but by the time we reached the mine they had stopped. In mining history, ElDorado is the most frequently used names because it means “a place of gold”. The ElDorado is located where the...

We decided today was perfect for taking the tour at the El Dorado Gold Mine, just north of Fairbanks. It was a two hour tour aboard a narrow gauge train, with demonstrations given along the way. The owners then gave a history and demo at the sluice box area, we were given bags of "pay dirt" and turned loose to pan for gold. Our findings were weighed in the gift shop area. We found 8.5 grams, or $17.00 worth - woohoo! Homemade cookies (still warm...mmmm) and coffee were given to all before we boarded the train for the trip back. It was...

We went to the Gold dredge #8 in Fox, north of Fairbanks. This Historic District is described as a floating workhorse or a mechanical gold pan, ceased operations in 1959 when Alaska became an environmentally aware state. This dredge extracted millions of ounces of gold from the bedrock under the permafrost. The "sludge", the gravel and rock extracted and discarded, was contaminated by the mercury used to extract the gold. They found out that it was more profitable to sell the gravel and sand than the gold. On the tour we learned about the...